All attention will shortly be focused on Pope Benedict’s new social encyclical, which is supposed to be based on Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, issued in 1967. Today, then, I would like to focus on one of the ideas laid out by Pope Paul in his far-reaching document, an idea that seems to have been lost in the midst of time, and yet is more relevant today than ever before. It is the idea to set up a world fund whereby world leaders would “set aside part of their military expenditures for a world fund to relieve the needs of impoverished peoples”. Cut military expenditure, promote development.
Pope Paul’s World Fund
July 6, 2009
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Catholic Social Teaching, Morning's Minion, War and Peace, militarism, war | 
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Another Post on Catholicism and Secular Celebrations
July 5, 2009I know, I know, it’s a bit of Vox Nova tradition now to question the easy embrace of secular traditions by Catholics, and even the incorporation into the liturgy, at this time of year (yes, I heard America the Beautiful today). Let me approach this from a historical angle, and think about the slow death of Catholic culture. In medieval times, life quite literally revolved around the liturgy. Eamon Duffy, in his masterful Stripping of the Altars, makes this point quite lucidly — there was the six-month cycle from Advent through Pentecost, and about fifty feast days scattered throughout the year — feasts on which vigil fasts were kept, and no work was done. As a result of the reformation, the Enlightenment, the modern nation state, the modern economy, and secularism, we no longer cling to this tradition. But what have we lost? We have lost a life that revolves around the faith, around the liturgy. And we have replaced it with the wholesale embrace of the secular liturgy – in the United States, this includes “feasts’ like July 4 and Thanksgiving. I am not calling for a total withdrawal from secular society and a refusal to recognize these secular rituals. But must we as Catholics rush to embrace them so willingly, to even incorporate them in the liturgy? We once had something a lot better.
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Morning's Minion, Nationalism, Uncategorized | 
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First Things Bottums Out
July 2, 2009In a new low, Joseph Bottum spreads a rumor that Doug Kmiec will be appointed ambassador to Malta. Bottum’s response? “For Malta? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Malta?”. Think about this for a couple of seconds. He is of course referring to Kmiec’s support for Obama last year. Bottum is suggesting that he has sacrificed his very soul. And why exactly? For endorsing a political candidate that Bottum did not like. For coming to the prudential conclusion that the pro-life strategy endorsed by Bottum and Co. is not working. There is no accusation that Kmiec did anything evil, or dissented from any core Catholic teaching.
But because Kmiec dares to disagree on political tactics, he is damned. He loses his soul because he will not support the party that brought you the Iraq war, torture, undistilled laissez-faire liberalism, and mockery of environmental issues. And in the meantime, Bottum’s First Things colleagues are busy adopting these very neocon positions relating to war and peace, telling us that the global financial crisis was caused by the poor and minorities, and that promoting climate change as a vast conspiracy against every American’s right to consume as much as he wishes. It’s not like the Church hasn’t condemned war, declared torture a non-negotiable, denounced the greed at the root of the financial crisis, embraced a pro-poor economic policy, and called for mechanisms to mitigate climate change, right? I would desist from judging souls if I were you, Mr. Bottum.
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Letter to G8 from the Eight Bishops Conferences
July 2, 2009For those who don’t know, the G8 encompasses the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. The bishops representing each country have penned a timely open letter (hat tip, Rocco). See below:
1 Comment | Climate Change, Economy, Ecumenism, Global Warming, Morning's Minion, Poverty | Permalink
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Michael Novak’s Shoddy Economic Analysis Part II
July 1, 2009Almost exactly two years ago, when this blog was first launched, and we were all more naive and innocent (!), I wrote a post entitled “Michael Novak’s Shoddy Economic Analysis“. I took him to task for misreading the economic data to prove his point, which was that inequality did not increase under the Bush administration. Well, folks, everybody’s favorite Catholic laissez-faire liberal has struck again, and this time he muses on the global financial crisis. In a nutshell, he blames it on the government and on poor people. This is what he says:
“government action was the principal villain in the 2009 debacle. It was the federal government that forced banks to make sub-prime loans to poor families (who were known to be unable to pay their mortgages on a regular basis)….The federal government even guaranteed the work of two huge quasigovernment mortgage companies—Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac—that wrote more than half of all mortgages during the fateful years.”
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Chart of the Day: Red States, Blue States, and Morality
June 30, 2009See voting patterns by state and the incidence of divorce, teenage birthrates, and pornography usage.
46 Comments | Morality, Morning's Minion, Politics | Permalink
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The Neocons Strike Back
June 29, 2009As we watch the unfolding situation in Iran, one of the most frustrating aspects from the United States vantage point is the credulity granted to neocon commentators. The same coterie of warmongers who got it so disastrously wrong in Iraq are being given a bully pulpit to get it disastrously wrong in Iran. The target of their ire is Obama, who — while speaking out against state violence — refuses to come out in favor of the Moussavi party, or to threaten the regime with “consequences” at the present time. And they are given a voice, on television, and on the op-ed pages of leading newspapers (and the Washington Post is the worst offender). Yet again, we are hearing that the regime is about to fall, that American support will embolden the opposition, that American style “freedom” and democracy are coming to Persia. Remember Iraq? Remember the flowers that were supposed to welcome the American occupation militia? Remember the utopian discourse of “freedom and democracy”, a discourse unmoored from history and context? And now we are seeing it all again, with the same names and the same aims. And, as always, the solution is war, and the creed is the redemptive and transformative power of bloodshed.
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Chart of the Day
June 26, 2009
Leave a Comment » | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Nixon on Abortion
June 24, 2009“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” — Nixon.
Two intrinsic evils in one pithy statement.
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Health Care Costs
June 22, 2009When most of the attention is fixated on the government’s balance sheet (medicare and medicaid), the far bigger problem is private health care. Ultimately, this way of thinking is myopic – you might not be paying for it through higher taxes, but you are paying for it by lower wages (and some people are paying for it by being denied health care altogether – about 2 million each year fall into the ranks of the uninsured). See below:
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Prayer for the Day
June 21, 2009Thomas Merton’s Prayer for Peace:
“Almighty and merciful God, Father of all men, Creator and ruler of the universe,
Lord of all history, whose designs are without blemish, whose compassion for
the errors of men is inexhaustible, in your will is our peace.Mercifully hear this prayer which rises to you from the tumult and desperation
of a world in which you are forgotten, in which your name is not invoked,
your laws are derided and your presence is ignored. Because we do not
know you, we have no peace.From the heart of an eternal silence, you have watched the rise of empires
and have seen the smoke of their downfall. You have witnessed the impious
fury of ten thousand fratricidal wars, in which great powers have torn whole
continents to shreds in the name of peace and justice.
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Christina Romer on the Lessons of 1937
June 19, 2009In the field of economics, Christina Romer is one of the acknowledged leading experts on the Great Depression. It’s worth listening to her insights on the relevance of the Great Depression for today. Here she is in The Economist, (no left-wing magazine that)!:
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Virtuous Private Health Insurance
June 18, 2009A huge part of the problem with the privatized health insurance system in the United States is that insurance companies do whatever they can to avoid paying out money to sick people. One way to do it is simply to deny coverage altogether, or to charge exorbitant premia. Another way is to actually refuse to pay for the healthcare of people actually enrolled in their insurance schemes — this was the topic of recent congressional oversight. Basically, the three leading health insurance companies said they would continue the practice of dropping coverage. Of course, they claimed to be merely stopping fraud. But when asked if they would cease this practice except in the cases of fraud or dishonesty, they all said no– emphatically.
A congressional committee investigating the matter found that, between them, the three insurers canceled the insurance of more than 20,000 people over the last few years, saving $300 million. They singled out people with cancer and lymphoma, simply because they were too expensive to cover. In fact, Blue Cross employees were praised and rewarded for dropping coverage.
People seemed genuinely shocked by this testimony, even the Republicans. But this is nothing new. Advocates of health care reform have been talking about this for years. This is precisely what happens when health insurance becomes a profit-making business. As Pope John Paul pointed out in Centesimus Annus, there are certain things that are appropriate for the free market, and certain things that are not. Health care is clearly in the latter camp. I also find it amazing that opponents of reform cry about “faceless bureaucrats” making health care decision — the whole point of reform is to stop profit-maximizing executives making these decisions.
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American Unprincipled Project
June 17, 2009I randomly discovered this site, dubbed (rather modestly) the American Principles Project. It is not a Catholic site, but it was founded by Catholic philosopher Robert George and has as its “communications director” a certain Thomas Peters, who has some minor renown as the proprietor of the American Papist blog that in reality leans far more American than papist. Anyway, this American Principles Project epitomizes everything I find troublesome with the Catholic right — its America-centered view of the world, its selective approach to morality, its misapplication of the term “conservative” to encompass radically individualist beliefs. Let me just give a few examples.
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First Things, Israel, Conservatism, and WALL-E
June 12, 2009I’ve always regarded First Things as less a Catholic journal than a journal in the right-wing American liberal tradition. When it comes to a choice between the teachings of the Church and support for American foreign and economic policy, it seems to always choose the latter.
I want to talk about a couple of incidences.
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Blame Bush and the Recession
June 10, 2009I was talking yesterday about the deficit being largely a result of what Obama inherited, plus the effect of the huge downturn. Coincidentally, David Leonhart does some of the heavy lifting today, tracing the estimated budget deficit in 2009-12 by year, and quantifying the changes over time. The chart comes after the break. It’s eye-opening.
4 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion, Obama | Permalink
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American Socialism (A Long and Detailed Post)
June 9, 2009I was talking with some Republican-leaning Catholics recently. They nearly always tell you that they are Republicans because of abortion, and yet when you drill down, you find that they have accidentally ingested plenty of other Republican talking points too. The latest hobbyhorse is Obama’s socialism. The Church condemns socialism, I was told earnestly. Indeed it does (and it condemns full-throttled capitalism too for that matter), but what struck me is that these people really do not understand what socialism is. I will discuss three different issues — government ownership of assets, taxes, and deficits.
39 Comments | Economics, Economy, Morning's Minion, Obama | Permalink
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That’s The Point!
June 8, 2009In the health care reform debate, much of the opposition seems to be forming around the so-called “public option”, the idea that people should have the choice of a public or private insurance plan. It was precisely this aspect that made Hillary Clinton’s plan superior during the election period. The New York Times spells out the problem:
“But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare’s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.”
But isn’t that exactly the point? Indeed, it is precisely why single-payer systems work so well– they cut out the middle-man, and take out the profit motive from health care. Combining a universal mandate with community rating means that insurance premiums become affordable and everybody gets covered. And no, there need not be long waiting lists and you get to choose your own doctor (it seems to be far easier to get same-day doctor’s appointments in single-payer countries, and they often even do house visits!). Right now, the insurance companies spend $50 billion a year trying to deny coverage. This is not an ideological point. If the private insurance companies started offering decent affordable coverage, and stopped excluding people, then fine. Until then, give people the power to choose.
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Sounds Like a Ticking Bomb Scenario To Me…
June 8, 2009From the Washington Post:
“The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.”
If this is the case, then why not subject Roeder to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that clearly, according to the Cheneyists, do not constitute torture, and are quite helpful in gathering information to save lives? Why not waterboard him? Why not subject him to sensory deprivation? Why not subject him to prolonged stress standing? Why not prevent him sleeping for weeks on end? Why not slam him against the wall for hours on end? Why not hang him from the ceiling in excruciating pain? Why not put him in a cold cell with no clothes? Why not threaten the lives of his family and friends? Why not…? Why are the Cheneyists so silent? Don’t these techniques work so well? Or do they only work against non-Americans?
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Obama’s Greatest Speech to Date
June 4, 2009I was literally blown away by the Cairo speech to the Islamic world, its content and its tone, especially in light of the previous eight years. Sure, there are a few expected nods to American exceptionalism, but the Catholic themes of unity and peace really struck a chord. This is an incredibly important speech, an unprecedented speech, and is a necessary reminder that Obama was indeed the better candidate in the last election. The Vatican also expressed its appreciation.
Let me quote what I consider the highlights.
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US vs. Rome
June 3, 2009I’ve noted before that the over-reaction among some US Catholics to the Obama presidency is causing some divergence between themselves and Rome. And now Vaticanologist Sandro Magister weighs in on this issue, noting that people like Deal Hudson, George Weigel, and Michael Novak are even accusing the Vatican of capitulation on abortion. Their ire is particularly directed at L’Osservatore Romano and its editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, after the newspaper ran a number of stories on Obama more balanced that these American Catholics liked, most recently on his Notre Dame speech. Given that the Secretary of State is known to keep a close eye on the editorial stance of the newspaper, their frustrations are showing.
100 Comments | Abortion, Iraq War, Morning's Minion, Torture, Vatican | Permalink
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New Catholic Convert Defends Torture
June 2, 2009A conversation with Newt Gingrich:
“DIA: Do you believe any of the Bush administration’s approved interrogation techniques amounted to torture? Asked another way, why is waterboarding torture when it’s done by the Khmer Rouge, but “enhanced interrogation” when it’s done by America?
Mr Gingrich:No. As a British court noted, waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding has been routinely used to train American pilots in the military to understand what interrogation techniques they might encounter. The reference to the Khmer Rouge is the kind of moral equivalence President Reagan warned against in his “Evil Empire” speech in 1983. The Khmer Rouge killed millions of people, annihilated the Cambodian intellectuals, and was among the worst inhumane movements in the last century. The United States has used specific enhanced interrogation techniques in specific circumstances against very high-level terrorists for the purpose of saving innocent civilian lives, not for taking them.”
He seems to be saying the the object of the act does not matter, only the intention of the acting moral agent. And since the US are the good guys, they don’t intend any ill on people, which makes this kind of torture licit. It sounds suspicously like the depraved logic of Andrew McCarthy of the National Review. As the coiner of the phrase “consequentialism”, Elizabeth Anscombe, put it: “on this theory of what intention is, a marvellous way offered itself of making any action lawful. You only had to ‘direct your intention’ in a suitable way. In practice this means making a little speech to yourself: “What I mean to be doing is…” Sorry, Newt, but if you are want to be Catholic, you need to get your moral theology from official sources, not Ronald Reagan — and it’s you who are engaging in moral relativism, it’s you who are denying that something the Church deems intrinsically evil is not indeed intrinsically evil.
20 Comments | Consequentialism, Morning's Minion, Torture | Permalink
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Anscombe vs. National Review
May 29, 2009The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy makes the following defense of torture:
“To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture. To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer — if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.”
14 Comments | Consequentialism, Morning's Minion, Torture | Permalink
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Crossing Borders for Health Care
May 27, 2009As the health care reform debate shapes up, the special interest are yet again doing their best to scare people. It’s 1994 all over again. The latest ad features a Canadian woman who claims she would have died of brain cancer had she not ventured across the border, to be saved by the US healthcare system. And we see this argument pulled out of the hat over and over again, whenever we talk about the failings of the US healthcare system (such as 80 million either uninsured or seriously underinsured). Whatever the merits of this particular woman’s case, the general argument itself has no merit whatsoever.
An academic study in the Health Affairsjournal finally puts this myth to bed (hat tip to Paul Krugman). Bottom line:
“Results from these sources do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States. Indeed, the numbers found are so small as to be barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home…Canadians coming south with their own money to purchase U.S. health care—appear to be handfuls rather than hordes.”
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St. John Houghton
May 25, 2009In keeping with the Tudor’s theme, and in my own twist on “Memorial day”, I would like to share this photograph. I took it about a year ago at Tyburn convent in London. It depicts St. John Houghton, prior of the Carthusian charterhouse in London. Houghton was the first Catholic martyr to refuse to sign Henry VIII’s oath of supremacy. The sister who gave the tour of the relics recounted the story. As pressure was applied on the Carthusians, they deliberated their fate. St. John Houghton offered a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. At the elevation, his hands locked up, and he was unable to lower them. At that very point, the monks together opted for martyrdom. Houghton and two other leading Carthusians were hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in May, 1535. Many others followed. Let us celebrate our own Catholic “Memorial day” by remembering the Catholics who bravely died for the faith.
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The Tudors
May 22, 2009I have mixed feelings about this modern production. On one hand, I love the era and am drawn to it. I like many of the characters, the slow pace, and the fairly decent treatment of the topics. On the other hand, I am put off by the “soap opera” elements. When the first series ended with the death of Cardinal Wolsey, I was afraid the series would take a sharp anti-Catholic turn. I am now about half way through the second season, and I am impressed so far. Henry is increasingly erratic and narcissistic. Cromwell is creepy and sinister. Anne Boleyn is conniving, and her father is even worse. Indeed, the only honorable characters are Queen Catherine, Thomas More, and John Fisher. I was deeply impressed with how it portrayed the deaths of More and Fisher. Here is the death of Fisher, which I found incredibly moving.
24 Comments | Film, History, Martyrdom, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Irony is Lost on Some People
May 21, 2009An American Catholic blogger criticizes Fr. James Martin after watching him debate EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on CNN. Discussing the Notre Dame nonsense, Fr. Martin lamented that the life issue was being reduced to abortion, ignoring everything else. Arroyo shot back by distinguishing abortion as an intrinsic evil that could never be justified, and other issues. Of course, this blog post (and the majority of the comments) side with Arroyo and denounce Martin.
Here’s the irony– Arroyo is the one on record defending an instrinsically evil act, torture. Recall his recent conversation with Fr. Sirico. Here is what he said, courtesy of Commonweal:
“ARROYO: Many people will then come in and say, “Wait a minute, but they’re against torture, and they’re for immigration…” These are all prudential judgments, as opposed to this abortion question…”
They go on to claim that the Bush-Cheney techniques are not torture. They make jokes about waterboarding. Finally, Sirico argues that torture might be fine if done by a competent authority, if it is proportionate, and the threat is imminent. In words, he takes something the Church defines as intrinsically evil and creates circumstances when it might be licit. Arroyo’s response? “Mm-hmm. Agreed.”
So there we have it. Arroya criticizes Martin’s argument on the grounds that abortion stands apart because it is intrinsically evil. Martin does not dispute this, and in no way defends abortion. And yet, a few weeks earlier, we have Arroyo himself defending an intrinsically evil act. Irony indeed.
58 Comments | Abortion, Morning's Minion, Torture | Permalink
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Useful Idiots
May 20, 2009Mark Shea has been very forthright of late in criticizing the co-option of the pro-life movement by the anti-life elements of the GOP (not being a regular reader, I don’t know if this is new or not). Here is a sample:
“In our focus on abortion, we are forgetting that larger cultural forces are *using* us and that prudence bids us to pay attention to that and not let our fight for the unborn get co-opted by people who only wish to use us, not help us or the unborn…the average pro-lifer (and with Catholics the stats are even higher) has tended to identify with and defend things nobody calling themselves “prolife” should ever have tried to defend: namely, practically everything the Bush Administration did, no matter how stupid or criminal…We may wish that the kidz at ND could see more clearly the intentions of prolifers in wanting to save babies. But the fact remains that they perceive prolifers largely as tools of a discredited political party.”
81 Comments | Abortion, Catholic Social Teaching, Morning's Minion, Torture | Permalink
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Last Word to Michael Sean Winters
May 19, 2009He puts it well:
“Most opponents of Notre Dame’s decision to honor the President focused on one part of the text: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.” Now, it is a fair question whether Barack Obama, in promising policies that seek to reduce the abortion rate, is acting in defiance of anyone’s fundamental moral principles. (The abortion reduction language he used throughout the campaign and again at Notre Dame certainly annoys and angers some pro-choice activists.) There was a time when Catholics could be skeptical of the claim by some that they were “pro-choice but not pro-abortion” but Obama seems to making that a distinction with a difference.
It is also the case that virtually every American politician acts in defiance of some fundamental principle of the Catholic Church. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is justifying the use of torture (and his arguments are echoed on EWTN) by invoking the age old maxim that the ends justify the means, but that is a utilitarian principle not a Catholic one. Nor is the recourse to the category of intrinsic evil much help here. Lots of things are intrinsically evil including birth control and as I have pointed out before there is not a mayor nor a governor who does not sign a budget that funds some form of birth control policy.”
16 Comments | Abortion, Morning's Minion, Obama | Permalink
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Who Pays the Price for Global Warming?
May 18, 2009I think it’s high time to return to more serious topics in the public square. Have a look at the map below, from a year-long study by The Lancet. The top map is weighted by carbon emissions. The United States is huge. China and Europe are large too. Africa is minuscule. Now look at the map below — this is the estimated deaths from global warming, if policies do not avert it. Here we see the opposite — the costs are almost uniquely borne by the poorest regions of the world, especially Africa and the Asian subcontinent. The Lancet concludes that climate change “is the biggest global health threat of the 21 century.” And in terms of the distribution, “loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations”. This is astounding. It is a wake up call for solidarity, global solidarity. Can people in America and elsewhere get past their “right” to engage in whatever behavior they desire, to consume whatever they desire, to drive whatever they desire, and focus on the global common good? That is indeed the challenge.
(Hat tip: Ezra Klein)
37 Comments | Climate Change, Global Warming, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Partisan Pro-Lifers
May 14, 2009I can argue day and night about the partisan identification of the pro-life movement with the Republican party, how it is harming the culture of life, how it is a smokescreen for policies that go against Catholic social teaching, and how it ultimately does a great dis-service to the unborn — but no line of argument can come close to the emotional impact of this post by Tim Shipe. This is the real deal — a pro-life Democrat who ran for office on a platform of protecting the unborn, and also proposing something no politician seems willing to touch, regulating the activities of fertility clinics. His Republican opponent was pro-life in name (he had no accomplishments on this front, and was disinclined to talk about the issue) and further from Catholic teaching across the board than Mr. Shipe. And yet, Mr. Shipe was not only ignored by the pro-life movement, he was treated with derision and disdain. Some openly told him they only supported Republicans. Another was annoyed by his position on immigration — a position totally aligned with the bishops! This is the best evidence I have seem yet that it really is giant smokescreen. Many of these “pro-lifers” are exploiting the unborn for political reasons. And that is deeply sinful.
52 Comments | Abortion, Morning's Minion, Politics | Permalink
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Inculturating American Culture
May 7, 2009I thought I would take a beak from my normal political ranting, and devote a subject yesterday to the tender subject of Catholic weddings. A rather uncontroversial subject, one might think, and indeed, the thread was a lot of fun with people sharing their different wedding liturgical experiences.
And this comes this, the return of the political. Dale Price responds with a mocking post entitled “Inculturation is only good if it’s not American culture.” The subject of that post is pellucid from the title. Mr. Price seems to be accusing me of deriding particularly American traditions, while being open to liturgical customs from other cultures. He says quite explicitly that while Filipino and Latino customs are praised (or at least tolerated), the problem is with the “blanket exclusion of American ones.” Of course, my post was mainly concerned with what I think is an inappropriate form of wedding procession — it was not focused on inculturation at all. Read the rest of this entry »
44 Comments | America, Immigration, Inculturation, Marriage, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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Catholic Marriage Processions and Other Problems
May 6, 2009Courtesy of Rocco, I came across this set of guidelines designed by the USCCB for Catholic weddings. Too often in our culture, the Church wedding is just part of the trappings that goes along with the extravagant dress, the “wedding parties”, the flowers– plus the overdose of mushy sentimentalism. It’s a great photo-op. But these guidelines note that it is more than a photo-op, and that the Church should not be used as as a mere wedding prop.
My favorite point is the one concerning the wedding procession, which seems to be universally ignored:
“What the movies depict isn’t necessarily what the Church envisions. The bride and the groom enter freely and equally into marriage, and the entrance procession symbolizes that, as the couple approach the altar to stand before the Lord. The Rite of Marriage suggests that the liturgical ministers (priest, deacon, reader, servers) lead the procession, followed by the bride and bridegroom, each escorted by “at least their parents and the witnesses.” Perhaps the groom goes first, led by his attendants and escorted by his parents, followed by the bride, led by her attendants and escorted by her parents.”
This is what the Church calls for, and it is liturgically proper. And yet, how many Catholic weddings consist of a liturgically-inappropriate wedding procession — a secular organ tune, the slow march of bridesmaids, followed by the escort of the bride by her father, while the grooms stands shiftily at the altar rails? This is wrong on so many levels, not least for the symbol of the father giving away his daughter like a piece of property. In fact, the couple embrace the sacrament as equals, and in fact marry each other (again, I doubt many realize that). When I mention this to priests, they always agree with me, but are universally unwilling to mention this to wedding parties, so ingrained is the sense of entitlement.
I wish more Catholic couples would take these guidelines seriously. Yes, it is a small issue in the scheme of things, but it feeds into the larger issue of the loss of a distinctive Catholic culture.
For the record, my wife and I followed these guidelines almost to the letter – from the procession to memorizing our vows to the use of people in liturgical functions. We also used incense, and were told this was a first!
41 Comments | Marriage, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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The American Problem
May 5, 2009The rabid reaction of many American Catholics to the election of Obama seems to be a cause of concern in the Vatican, unused to the tempest of American bitter partisanship. Even some bishops seemed to have jumped on the bandwagon. I have noted in the past that this perplexes many Europeans, and that the pro-choice Sarkozy was made an honorary canon at the pope’s own church of St. John Lateran. And that fact that many seem to think that Obama speaking at a Catholic university is a greater moral evil than the government actually torturing somebody speaks to the depravity of this position. In this post, I want to point to two good recent pieces– the America editorial and John Allen’s latest musing from the Vatican.
59 Comments | Abortion, America, Morning's Minion, Obama, Politics | Permalink
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For the Folks At EWTN…
May 1, 2009..and especially for Fr. Sircio and Raymond Arroyo who seem to think that Obama speaking at Notre Dame is a greater moral evil than the United States torturing people. I single out the United States, for I doubt they would equivocate over torture being a “prudential judgment” that might be licit if done by a “competent authority” or “depending on circumstances” if (say) the Khmer Rouge were the acting agent. No, this is a sad attempt by those on the Catholic right to align themselves not only with a secular partisan movement, but also with the interests of American nationalism and the security state.
A few months back, John Carr of the USCCB made the following crystal-clear points about the Church’s approach to torture, and Sirico and Arroyo need a little education, so it seems:
48 Comments | Morning's Minion, Torture, USCCB | Permalink
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Obama Addresses Abortion
April 30, 2009Here are the exact words:
“You know, the — my view on — on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.
I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest — and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.
The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that — that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their doctors, with their clergy.
So — so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted presidencies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.
And so I’ve got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.
Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s — that’s where I’m going to focus.”
30 Comments | Abortion, Bush administration, Morning's Minion, Obama, Politics | Permalink
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A Watershed Moment
April 27, 2009Deal Hudson has apparently declared the reaction against Obama’s invitation to Notre Dame to be a “watershed moment”. He’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks. As the dust settles and we can observe the reaction to Notre Dame’s invitation with an element of dispassion, it becomes clear that the cheapening and dumbing-down of right-wing discourse over the past 20 years or so has now been fully integrated into Catholic discourse, and this will have dire consequences for the culture– both the political culture and the all-important culture of life. This is the point I wish to argue in this post.
55 Comments | Abortion, Bush administration, Iraq War, Morning's Minion, Obama, Torture | Permalink
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Deal Hudson and Torture
April 24, 2009Rob Vischer of Mirror of Justice reports the following purported statement from Deal Hudson:
“In addressing “torture,” Hudson put it in the context of the “just war” philosophy.
Hudson: As with just war theory, there must be a clear threat; there must be reasonable chance for success; there must be a reasonable use of force (in the case [of torture] death or impairment should never be the result), and the consequences should not cause greater harm.
Hudson further explained to me that “the precise issue is whether or not the state can inflict suffering in order to protect the common good. If we say ‘yes,’ the circumstances have to be tightly prescribed.
If this is true, and Hudson did indeed make this argument, then it has grave implications. He has fallen into the consequentialist trap, when the Church has unambiguously declared torture to be an intrinsically evil act, regardless of intent or circumstance. The analogy with just war teaching is off. The reason one cannot say upfront that all war is intrinsically evil is that some wars may be justified by circumstances. It so happens that these circumstances are more narrowly circumscribed that many Catholic war defenders are willing to admit, but the door is still open, even if slightly. It’s the same with the death penalty, but here the opening is so narrow that no case in the modern world would realistically make it through. But the door is firmly closed against torture. As an intrinsically evil act, you do not need to move onto the next phase of the moral calculus and ask about consequences. It is for this reason that a particular directly-procured abortion could not be justified by any appeal to circumstances, such as the woman’s health, material circumstances etc.
I wonder if Hudson is aware how serious this is. If he is thinking along these lines, then he is standing resolutely against the magisterium on a non-negotiable matter. Ironically, Hudson has been out in front demanding sanctions against those who publicly support abortion from receiving the Eucharist. And yet, if you interpret the appropriate canon in this manner– as I have argued before– than Hudson’s own manifest support for an intrinsically evil policy on this scale would also be grounds for banning him from communion. Not that I support that, mind you, but let’s please be consistent.
50 Comments | Consequentialism, Morning's Minion, Torture | Permalink
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Nuclear Silence
April 20, 2009Barack Obama, president of the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons in war, has called for a world free of nuclear weapons. One of the very few things I admire about Ronald Reagan was that he too abhorred nuclear weapons, and dreamed of a world without them. And now Obama has taken up the cause of abolition, committing to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. ” This is huge news. Surely, given Church teaching on the issue, this commitment would be applauded in Catholic circles? In fact, it was largely ignored.
20 Comments | Morning's Minion, Nuclear weapons, Obama, War and Peace | Permalink
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Bush the Gnostic
April 17, 2009Larison has an interesting restrospective on the so-called “conservative Christians” who hopped on Bush’s bandwagon:
“It makes no sense to blame Christian orthodoxy or traditional Christianity for the religiously-tinged ideology of the Bush administration and the resulting failures of this ideology’s optimistic and hubristic approach to the world. It is no accident that the most strident and early critics of the Bush administration hailed from traditionalist Catholic and Orthodox circles that make Linker’s bete noire of First Thingslook like the relatively liberal, ecumenist forum that it is. Mr. Bush espoused a horrifyingly heterodox religious vision, one far more akin to the messianic Americanism … than it is to anything that could fairly be called orthodoxy. To the extent that … the so-called “theocons,” were more or less entirely on board with what Mr. Bush was doing, even if they felt compelled to use their own teachings in distorted form to do it, they were not championing orthodoxy at all. One might go so far to say that as they became stronger supporters of Mr. Bush, the less orthodox they tended to become, because the arguments they had to employ to defend Mr. Bush’s outrageous actions and gnostic impulses necessarily ate away at orthodox teachings.”
11 Comments | Bush administration, Gnosticism, Morning's Minion | Permalink
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